Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Women Codebreakers Bletchley Park: Interesting Links

As you guys may remember, I am working on a rather large research paper for my history class on the women codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park during WWII in England. I know a few people expressed interest in this topic as well, so I have rounded up some really great links I have come across for you to check out if you are interested. I'm also planning on doing a post on books to read on this topic as well.


The employees at BP were 75% women. They held a variety of positions and made huge contributions to the war efforts, but in many cases, they were unaware of the importance of the work they were doing. Operations at BP remained secret until 1974 when the first novel by a BP employee was published. Many of these women never told their families of the work they did during the war.

Interview with Jean Valentine, cryptologist at BP

Interview with Mavis Batey, cryptologist (scroll down a bit for the audio interview) the site also has interesting biographies of some of the women working at BP.

I love hearing from the actual women who worked at the park! They are amazing women. They were doing advanced work in science, math, and language at a time when many universities would not even grant degrees to women.

Joan Clarke is a great woman to research (she is played by Keira Knighly in The Imitation Game) as she was the only women to hold the title of Head-Cryptologitst. She has not done very many interviews unfortunately, and the ones she has done focus mostly on her brief engagement to Turning, again unfortunately. But there is some of her writings out there and research done on her.

Google Cultural Institute

Google put together three really great cultural institute galleries about Bletchley Park, one about the work done there in general, one about the women at BP, and one about the recent restoration of the park to turn it into a museum. These presentations contains primary source pictures and quotes, video interviews, and historical documents. These are really cool and I highly recommend checking them out.

Bletchleypark.org

This is the official site of BP. You can find a short history here and information on visiting, which I'm totally jealous if you live close enough to visit!

Smithsonian Magazine Article 

Lifting the Veil: CNN Article

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, or any links that you know of about these incredible women. Happy researching!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing these! I love knowing about these women and the contribution they made to the war effort.

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    Replies
    1. Hope you learn something new from the links!
      Thanks for stopping by!

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